


Breach Capacity

by rainedparade



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dialogue Heavy, Dornian Heresy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainedparade/pseuds/rainedparade
Summary: Three times Rogal and Konrad met at the walls of the Imperial Palace before, during, and after the heresy.





	Breach Capacity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AntiGravitas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiGravitas/gifts).



The galaxy is a busier place by the time Konrad is found. Rogal learns of him from Ferrus, having himself heard an earful from Fulgrim no doubt. And now Fulgrim, the designated caretaker, is away on Crusade business -- something about making a show of force on Molech by means of four Legions, absurd, if you ask Rogal, but his father has always been a man of grand maneuvers -- which means the caretaking, for whatever reason, falls to his shoulders.

"You're not Father," Konrad says on their first meeting. This is before he's been gifted with Mercy and Forgiveness, before he's been clothed in the Nightmare Mantle even. Rogal, on the other hand, has been at the front of the Crusade for half a century and his powersuit had grown to fit him like a second skin.

"I'm not," Rogal answers.

Konrad leans in and takes a deep breath. A whiff, really. Then he darts back out of reach, grinning. "You sure smell like him, though."

"Compliment acknowledged." After having heard Ferrus echoing Fulgrim, Rogal had been under the impression Konrad would have been cowed at the sight of him. Instead, his brother seems amused. "Come Konrad, there is something I'd like your help with."

"Wait, wait, wait," Konrad protests, sitting back on his heels and leering, "Aren't you going to tell me who you are?"

Rogal pauses, more offended than he ought to be. He takes a quick breath and turns to his charge. "I am Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists and Praetorian of Terra. I have also been tasked with watching over you while Fulgrim is occupied."

"Rogal," Konrad repeats, running it across his tongue. "Rogal Dorn. You are the seventh found, are you not?"

"I am."

"Ah," Konrad smiles, "The stalwart with a stick up his ass."

"I'll thank you to keep your comments to yourself," Rogal very maturely says, only narrowly biting back a grin.

"But those weren't _my_ comments," his brother protests.

"Leman's then."

"Are you so sure they are Leman's?"

"It does not matter to me if they are or are not," Rogal replies, turning his heel and marching in the direction he had been meaning to go. "Now come receive your orders."

Konrad scuffs at the floor and crosses his arms and huffs, likely spoiled by Fulgrim's laissez-faire style of oversight, but he nonetheless follows Rogal. They walk past the inner walls, through the Imperial gardens flanked by training fields on both sides, to the North Gate, where Rogal has been putting the finishing touches on his latest fortification.

"Now see this here," he says, gesturing to the ravelin with a flourish. He's a breath away from enlightening the other on the defensive capabilities of caponiers, bastions, and posterns, but Konrad -- like all his brothers -- remains one step ahead of him.

"I see," Konrad says instead. He pulls himself to his full height and cracks his knuckles.

Without meaning to, Rogal falters.

"...You do?"

"Crystal clear," Konrad shoots him a grin, "You built this shining piece of shit and now you want me to tell you how to break into it, yeah?"

Rogal raises his eyebrows.

"By all means," he concedes, gesturing to the open gate. But Konrad is too smart for that, even, which is what saves his skin as there would have been twenty-seven laser-guided missiles with his name on them had he taken the direct approach.

In the end, it takes Konrad a little under a full Terran day to breach through the seven-layers of security Rogal had implemented. On one hand, it spoke volumes of the defensive capability of the fortress, especially as this was man versus machine, and on the other hand, Rogal couldn't help but smart at the loss. His latest-found brother, the scion of a literal shadow world, and he was making mincemeat of Rogal's projects without even a legion to call his own!

He can't let Konrad have the last laugh, not like this, so when Konrad vaults through the final fence, somehow sidestepping three independent deadman switches, Rogal gets the drop on him, literally flattening him to the floor.

"Welcome to the command room," he booms while seated cross-legged over Konrad's back. "And congratulations on a masterful breaching."

"Thank you very much, brother," Konrad huffs from the floor, "Now get off me, you oaf!"

-

And now the galaxy is burning as they stand across from one another on the northwest traverse along the Walls of Terra. Dorn thinks it strange how Curze, uniquely, has not been touched by the Warp. Twice, he has tried probing his mind, looking for spaces to enter, but the Night Haunter is oddly sound. It must be his Nostramean roots, tying him to reality in all its brutal glory.

The two of them watch on as ships from the Third and Fourth legions take off, intent on intercepting the vanguard of the traitor forces.

In some way, Rogal cannot believe it's come to this. He knows -- or at least he thinks he knows -- Konrad must be feeling the same, albeit not for the same reasons. It's just... so absurd, and so very _frustrating_ that despite Konrad's plethora of reasons to stand against the Emperor, he remains a supporter of Imperial policy, and a stalwart one at that!

"Why do you wait?" Rogal asks. For the initial plan had been for the Eighth to lead the charge.

Konrad makes a humming noise, rocking on his heels. It's a comical pose, especially in his armour, and the action makes him look more menacing than contemplative. "I'm not sure," he admits, turning to Rogal and grinning, "Perhaps I'm waiting for the right time to slit your throat, eh?"

Rogal raises an eyebrow, refusing to rise to the challenge. His gaze however, catches on northernmost parapet and he remembers the first challenge (though he had not thought of it as such) he had placed upon Konrad. In the centuries since there had been many other feats, dozens of other embankments and towers, all of which fell apart as neatly as the first.

But the first...

"I never did discover how you managed to get through the seventh wall," he confesses. Indeed, he had tried himself after Konrad had been returned to Fulgrim (and then, in a matter of days, whisked off to be presented as the head of the Night Lords' legion) but he could only get as far as the sixth round of defenses. "I don't know if you felt it then," he continues, "But Father had a hand in them." Which was why it _should_ have been impossible for Konrad to vault over them like they child's play.

"I know," Konrad answers and Rogal turns to him in proper surprise. "I always said, you guys smell similar, but not alike."

"So then...?" Rogal furrows his brows.

"Either he was helping me teach you not to be such a dick," Konrad shrugs, "Or I'm just better than both of you."

The idea of the latter is enough for Rogal to crack a grin. Said grin consists of his left lip quirking upwards for a fraction of a second.

"I could," Konrad presses, and there's something like urgency in how he scrunches his already-sallow face up. It's too serious an expression for him and Rogal does not want to see it.

"Perhaps," Rogal concedes. "I know your men prefer void warfare but as for yourself..."

"Void warfare is irrelevant," Konrad interjects, waving a careless hand. "Justice is justice, regardless of where -- or how -- it's won. You understand, don't you, brother?"

Oh Throne, Dorn thinks, and he has never been more certain that Konrad _knows_ and that he's going to draw both his Lightning Claws and make mincemeat of Dorn's trachea and Dorn could fight back but even raising a hand to defend himself would be an admission of guilt and he's come so far, too far, to let it end here, like this.

Right as his fingers have curled about Storm's Teeth, Konrad crosses the distance between them, clasping his hand on Rogal's right pauldron.

"Keep a good head, brother," he says, smiling through half-lidded eyes, "For you've already a hell of a heart." And like that, he retreats to the lower levels of the palace, readying his own ships for deployment.

Rogal stands on the traverse for an hour afterward, right hand with a deathgrip on the hilt. Finally, as he watches the Night Lords ships taking to the skies, he lets go of the breath he'd been holding and turns back to the palace proper. With the last of the loyalists gone, the final phase could begin.

-

The curse of foreknowledge remains a constant. It affords Konrad a certain amount of vindication, knowing things will simply _be_. Neither the Praetorian's change or heart nor his betrayal of their father had caught him unaware. Though he had made an attempt, as he had attempted in Nostramo, to play with the fates, from the beginning, the fatalist in him knew there to be little point.

That all changes when his men make planetfall on the Throneworld.

Terra is even more of a husk than he remembered it. The siege waged by those closest to the Emperor has taken its toll on his golden palace. Of the sons that remain loyal, the closest of them have already taken to the Warp -- Horus foremost among them. Later historians will condemn his sluggishness in following suit and his men will take them to the gallows for it, this, he sees clear as day.

What he cannot see -- and what he has been unable to see since their arrival -- is his own death.

He peels off from his sons as per standard procedure and takes to roaming the bombed-out parapets and watchtowers, truly drinking in the crunch of rubble in his steps. What was it like, he wonders, for Dorn -- glorious, golden, infallible Dorn -- to wrong their father so? Had he been possessed by the daemons of the Warp? Had Malcador convinced him to turn? As Konrad makes his way to the seventh tower, the selfsame one Dorn had first tested him in, he thinks he understands: Dorn has been crafted for destruction and the bloodlust which flowed through Angron's veins was present in the Praetorian too.

Navigating the wreck of the tower is a task in itself. The stairway (or what's left of it) is littered with bodies from both sides. Konrad catches a Custode who had come out of a clash with three Raven Guard alive and puts him out of his misery with a languid draw from Mercy.

The momentary bout of blindness leaves him unprepared. He has been prepared for his death -- for _this_ death -- for what feels like his whole life and now he has been robbed of it.

Dorn is seated on the windowsill. There's a throng of Callidus assassins sprawled out at his feet. Despite the bloodshed, his golden armour is spotless, untarnished.

Konrad falls to his knees.

"Brother," he says, "Brother, what have you done?"

Dorn slides down and walks forward, crushing brick and mortar and bone with each step.

"Konrad," Dorn greets. "You weep. Why?"

He looks and sounds like the brother Konrad remembers. But his scent... he reeks of the Warp and little else. There's not a trace of the Emperor on him.

Konrad looks up and finds himself staring into eyes of blinding gold.

"I was to die by her hand," he answers, gesturing to one of the piles of flesh.

Dorn blinks slowly, as reluctant as ever to show emotion.

"A mortal?" this glorious, golden, infallible older brother of his demands. "You saw yourself slain by the blade of a mortal?"

Reality itself quivers in the wake of his ire. Konrad cannot hold his gaze, for how glorious and golden his brother has become. He hangs his head and digs his claws into the brickwork, robbed of the one constant in his life.

There is a slight pressure on his shoulder, the weight of Dorn's hand. Konrad thinks of the hundred tortures he inflicted on their brother. But Dorn removes his hand as quickly as he had placed it there and when Konrad at last lifts his head, he finds his brother has left. Left him in the corpse-strewn conservatory. Hours later, his men find him there, seated in the same spot as his brother. Try as he may, he cannot see what Dorn saw, nor can he see an end in sight. For the first time, the future is what he may make of it, and he hates the freedom so.


End file.
